Some questions to keep in mind:

1. Compare and contrast the development of political ideologies in the post-WWII era to those of the Depression era, concentrating on the attitudes of Americans toward Communism.
2. Compare the events, justifications, and results of the Second Red Scare to those of the First Red Scare.
3. Who supported Joe McCarthy and why?
4. Compare the competing American and Soviet visions for the post-war world in 1945. How did these opposing ideas lead to a "cold war?"
5. Compare the foreign policy goals of the Truman administration with those of Woodrow Wilson's administration.

The Second Red Scare

On May 26, 1938, Congress organized the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate American Fascists and Communists, although its focus soon became strictly anti-Communist. During WWII, HUAC concentrated on labor unrest, but after the war's end, it gained strength and began to investigate left-wing Americans who might be communist sympathizers. This search led HUAC to Hollywood in 1947, where left-leaning actors, writers, and directors were allegedly spreading subversive communist messages through their movies. One young actor who was ready to name names was future President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had come to Hollywood as an ardent New Deal Democrat, but when the political winds began to shift, he became a conservative Republican. HUAC did not uncover any of the systematic subversion it had alleged in Hollywood. Nevertheless, since being questioned or mentioned during a hearing was, in the minds of many studio executives, an indication of guilt, many suspected leftists found themselves on a blacklist that shut them out of jobs in cinema, radio, television, and theater for the next ten years.

The Trial of Alger Hiss

The Alger Hiss case that took place from 1948 to 1950 was another HUAC investigation and the second event that fueled the Second Red Scare. Hiss was a Harvard-educated New Dealer who had come to Washington during the Roosevelt administration. At the time of his trial, he was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His accuser was a self-described "dumpy, middle-aged, unhappy scoundrel" named Whittaker Chambers, who would go on to become a senior editor of Time magazine. Chambers accused Hiss of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s when Hiss had been employed at the State Department. Chambers claimed that he and Hiss had belonged to the same espionage ring and that Hiss had given him copies of secret State Department documents. A young California Congressman named Richard M. Nixon took up the case and soon captured national attention. When Chambers claimed that a he had hidden a microfilm of the secret documents in a pumpkin field near his farm, Nixon took members of the press with him to document the uncovering of the microfilm. The statute of limitations for an espionage charge had expired, so the federal government prosecuted Hiss was for perjury. The result of the first trial was a hung jury. After the second trial, a jury found Hiss guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. When Hiss was finally released from prison, he struggled to prove his innocence for decades. That moment finally came in 1992, when Hiss was 87. A Russian general in charge of Soviet intelligence archives declared that Hiss had never been a spy, but rather a victim of Cold War hysteria. Hiss died on November 15, 1996, just four days after his 92 birthday.

Truman loyalty program

In 1947, as part of this growing anti-communist hysteria, President Harry Truman ordered the Justice Department to draw up a list of possible "subversives" in government. Under the terms of this loyalty program, the federal government could dismiss an employee "if reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal." Truman not only associated Communism with Fascism and Nazism, but believed that Communism was the worst of the three.

McCarthyism

McCarthy continued to repeat his groundless charges and the number of Communists on his list fluctuated from speech to speech. Senior Republicans didn't care for McCarthy, but appreciated his attacks on the Truman administration. McCarthy labeled Secretary of State Dean Acheson "Red Dean." He also claimed that World War II General George Marshall had been "hoodwinked into aiding a great conspiracy." Furthermore, McCarthy argued that Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson--who would run for president on the Democratic ticket in 1952--"endorsed and would continue to endorse the suicidal, Kremlin-directed policies of this nation." The fact that the United States wasn't winning the Korean War (1950-53) also gave credibility to the argument that "subversives" were at work in the government.

Conformity

McCarthy's attacks emerged within a climate of political and social conformity. During this time, for example, one state required pro wrestlers to take a loyalty oath before stepping into the ring. In Indiana, a group of anti-communists indicted Robin Hood (and its vaguely socialistic message that the book's titular hero had a right to rob from the rich and give to the poor) forced librarians to pull the book from the shelves. Baseball's Cincinnati Reds renamed themselves the "Redlegs." Cosmetics companies recalled a face powder called "Russian Sable" and renamed it "Dark Dark." Starting in Dearborn, Michigan, and spreading to other parts of the country, "Miss Loyalty" beauty contests became the rage.

McCarthy's Supporters

The ranks of McCarthy's supporters were generally defined along political, religious, and occupational lines. They typically included:

1. Republicans
2. Catholics
3. Conservative Protestants
4. Blue-collar workers

One prominent Democrat who supported McCarthy was Joseph Kennedy. In fact, the senior Kennedy secured for his son, Robert, a job in Washington as an investigator for McCarthy.

McCarthy continued his anti-communist barrage until 1954. Unlike other congressional investigators, McCarthy seemed not to notice that the administration had changed in 1952. With Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House, McCarthy's campaigns against subversion in the government became an attack on his own party and an increasing liability for Republicans. In the spring of 1954, however, the tables turned when McCarthy charged that the United States Army had promoted a dentist accused of being a Communist. The ensuing hearings proved to be McCarthy's downfall. For the first time, television broadcast allowed the general public to see the Senator as a blustering bully and his investigations as little more than a misguided scam. In December 1954, the Senate voted to censure him for his conduct and to strip him of his privileges. McCarthy died three years later, but the term "McCarthyism" lives on to describe anti-Communist fervor, reckless accusations, and guilt by association.

The Cold War

Although the Soviet Union and the United States had been allies during World War II, their alliance quickly unraveled once they had defeated their common enemy. Different people have different views on the origins of the Cold War:

1. All the fault of the Soviet Union
2. All the fault of the United States
3. All of the above

The Cold War emerged because the United States and Soviet Union had radically different visions of the post-war world.  American politicians believed that the nations of the world were interdependent and should provide open markets for American goods and services. In this vision, free and open trade was necessary to prevent another Depression. In addition, many Americans were proud of their democratic system, believed in Manifest Destiny, and wanted to "share" their version of enlightened self-determination with the rest of the world, especially with the newly-independent states of Asia and Africa (see chart of American foreign aid 1945-1986).

The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had an entirely different vision of the post-war world. The Soviets were largely concerned about establishing greater security.  By some estimates, the U.S.S.R. had suffered military and civilian losses of 20 million during the war. Many more had died in Stalin's brutal political purges. The Soviet government, for example, often executed as traitors returning Red Army soldiers who had had the misfortune of being prisoners of war. Stalin feared that Germany would regain its strength in a matter of decades and launch yet another attack on Russian soil. In this atmosphere of xenophobia and obsession with security, the Soviet Union wanted to:

1. Ward off another attack
2. Establish defensible borders
3. Encourage friendly regimes on its western borders

Soviet leaders believed that they could meet these goals if they could foster friendly states to the west.  For this reason, Stalin and other Soviet leaders extended their control over much of eastern Europe during the decades after World War II. Soviet domination in this area denied the United States both free access to markets and the opportunity to export its vision of democracy.

The conflict between the world views of the United States and the U.S.S.R. came to a head with rebellions in Iran, Greece, and Turkey. During World War II, the British had occupied southern Iran, while the Soviets had occupied the north in the area bordering the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. At war's end, neither side wanted to pull out of the Middle East because both wanted access to the region's rich oil fields. The Soviet Union also sought to protect its southern border. Great Britain asked the United States for aid to prop up the pro-British Shah and to prevent Arab nationalists from gaining power. In 1946, the United Nations negotiated a settlement between the United States and the Soviet Union, but name calling between the American and Soviet delegates marred the session. Even though both sides eventually reached an agreement, growing political, economic, and military tensions between the two powers exacerbated the Cold War.

In Greece, Communist-led insurgents threatened to overthrow the corrupt, British-led monarchy. Although Communist Yugoslavia, rather than the Soviet Union, aided the rebels, Truman was eager to fight Communists of any stripe. Dean Acheson, then undersecretary of state, argued that a Communist victory in Greece would be disastrous for the United States and the Western world. He expressed this fear in the so-called "Rotten Apple Theory:" if Greece and Turkey went Communist, then, like a rotten apple in a barrel of fruit, the Communist menace would spread to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. American politicians would later restate this position, under different circumstances, as the "Domino Theory."

The Truman Doctrine

On March 12, 1947, Harry Truman appeared before Congress and set forth what would become known as the Truman Doctrine. He asked Congress for $500 million in aid for Greece and Turkey to put down Communist uprisings. In order to justify United States involvement in the internal affairs of other countries, Truman stated:

"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures...The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms."